 Now a few from the North comparing social safety nets part two and part two as we indicated in our last show Ken Rogers and me is about the homeless situation in Canada to compare it with the homeless situation in in Seattle and points east and west in continental United States for that matter in Hawaii. Welcome to the show Ken. Hi Jake. So you know the thing is that a few years ago I mean well well within our lifetimes there was no homeless problem really you didn't see it you didn't hear about it you didn't read about it. Now all of a sudden maybe maybe you know 10 or 20 years ago there was homeless everywhere and I for the life of me can understand I cannot understand that you know the vectors that have created this problem all within the last few years. Suffice to say it exists in the U.S. everywhere every every major city and it exists in Canada too I was surprised to find that out because I always think that Canada is actually in its own way better at handling the social safety net. But tell us how it exists in Canada and western Canada and what it looks like for example when you go to Vancouver and you look at Hastings Street which I saw a few years ago when I visited you there's Hastings Street. What does that tell us Ken? Well the Canadians have not done a better job of handling homelessness as you see it on the streets of let's say Seattle and Vancouver the two that I know best in terms of the large Canadian city and large U.S. city where the mess is about the same or the disgrace is about the same or the horrific situation is about the same. Now if you were to list all the people that are on let's say why do you have a social safety net and who are the people that you're trying to cover that with? Well you'd say old age well you don't find any old age people all the people that were under the social safety net 20 years ago they're still under there this is this is kind of like a new group that that doesn't list the deserve to be there in some people's mind. Now you know one of the keys is drugs and alcohol so you end up with a bunch of people that are really deserves to be in a hospital under an alcohol or drug treatment center. There is no such adequate treatment in Canada or the U.S. similarly with the drugs there really it's sort of an illegal activity so that it's sort of shoved to the side and it is not treated as a health problem. You've got the people who are living in those homeless tents and so on committing a variety of crimes they're picked up by the police they're taken to court and a couple hours later they're back on the street or a couple of days sometimes so they're just an endless number of repeat offenders so you need a total change in the laws in order to deal with you know how do you deal with a person that's addicted to drugs that's an a repeat offender and living on the street. You know you really have difficulty doing that and I don't think the United States has done any better at it than Canada has. You know what's done better and it's a kind of you know commonwealth place and that's Singapore in fact in a week's time we're going to have a show with a Singaporean woman who is going to explain to us why there is no homelessness at all in Singapore. I don't know the answer to the question I just know there is an answer and I know that Singapore has examined and succeeded in some sort of plan to minimize or completely avoid homelessness. It's not like there's no solution here. Well let me show you you know if we have a shot available of Hastings Street in Vancouver the way the homeless scenario exists there right now. I don't know if the viewers can see that but it's about three blocks long totally blocks the sidewalk from one edge to to the of the road to the buildings and that it's it's really one where the city of Vancouver has had an order that the police are supposed to move the encampment you know and they really are unable to. Well you're sitting with a large group of the residents are ones that are on drugs or alcohol or they have a mental illness and then you've got a bunch of others that are generally males between you know 25 and 40 that are in pretty good physical condition that kind of play warlords or you know they live off the rest of the homeless and that whenever there's a police effort to show up you know they are always in the background making or even in the front making an awful lot of noise about well we have nowhere else to live and end and end and they get enough sympathy that you know the authorities back off and in Vancouver when they move them from off of a particular place example they were before they moved to Hastings Street they were in a large park well they moved them out of the park and had you know was like a garbage dump when they finally got them out of there you know well then they just moved to another place so you you know you I would guess that Singapore probably had a a fairly adept police force that jumped on it early and that you know they have some way that they're dealing with their what I call the mental problems or the health problems I think of drugs alcohol and mental illness all as mental problems where many years ago Canada and the United States used to have you know mental asylums you know and and you tended to have people in an institution that had a mental mental thing now they can't go to a hospital they're on the street yeah let me let me add a factor that comes to mind I'll call it the Lord of the Flies factor the phenomenon you know in 1969 you and I already knew each other for several years in 1969 my wife and I found ourselves stuck on the New England Turnpike because it was Woodstock and it Woodstock hundreds of thousands of young people were at Woodstock having a music festival and it was a phenomenon was relatively speaking it was well behaved it was fun it was music the poor farm the farmer who owned that land you know he suffered but essentially you know I don't think anybody was killed I don't think anybody was badly hurt and yeah there was drugs and you know there was alcohol but they managed to keep it civilized there was no Lord of the Flies phenomenon working okay the same promoters who did in 1969 did another one in 1996 I think it was several years later I mean like 30 years later and it was also likewise in upstate New York it was on a decommissioned air force base there I forget the name of the base and they had the same number of people hundreds of thousands of people and it was a different generation can it was a different structure and the Lord of the Flies phenomenon presented itself and these kids went wild they literally burned the place down there was violence there was wholesale rape there were all kinds of injuries the musicians you know left they couldn't tolerate you know the disorder and I'm saying to myself you always have that risk and maybe we have that risk more now maybe that's a factor somehow that plays into the young people on Hastings Street this Lord of the Flies there's no control there's no structure and they you know they're out there you know doing what comes naturally whether there is alcohol or drugs or not they're doing what comes naturally maybe it's a different generation was speaking about maybe it's a different a different way of looking at things but the second Woodstock was way different than the first well a lot of times you get the underlying economic situation affects a whole generation you know for example the baby boom reached its peak in approximately 1960 so kids that were born in the early 60s to the mid 70s which would be the same generation that shows up at Woodstock in the late 90s you know there they when they hit the job market all jobs were full and they were all full of baby boomers that were not a heck of a lot older than them and that weren't going to go anywhere for years and years and years and all of those baby boomers had wonderful education you know compared to their parents and that and so that their economic opportunity their upside was not the same as you know the kids 10 and 15 years older than them where you and I born and you know during the war you know we had like a golden spoon compared to the kids that were born you know in the mid 60s or the early 60s because any time if you were out of a job but you could get one in a few minutes I can remember when I was in high school a friend of mine and I were we're on a you know a concrete crew you know we were scrawny kids age 16 sort of thing or 15 and pushing one of those big concrete buckets and we were on a crew with a bunch of really husky Italians and they thought it'd be really cute if if we you know had more concrete in our bucket you know so when the lift comes up up the side of this building and and they fill this concrete bucket well every so often they had to move the planks where you'd roll these concrete buckets too you'd like the there was a concrete truck at the bottom and they had pumped it up to the top and in these buckets and then you'd roll a bucket over to somewhere in the top of this building well we were on the 10-story building and and this bucket was so full by friend and I let let the bucket off the building like it we couldn't make the corner when this bucket was supposed to turn and so you know we were instantly fired well about about four hours later we had another job okay you know we're you know that you know that difficulty for that generation of kids is that way and and and a lot of it affected their attitude towards drugs and and alcohol and and other people and I don't know whether you know that generations after them have have improved a lot because I haven't been you know hiring a whole bunch of young people to get a feeling so would you say that the the homelessness problem in Canada is more likely to affect young people because you know in Hawaii a lot of the people who are homeless are you know elderly they don't have another option and they you know wheel around a shopping cart and that's their life and it's really it's really tragic to see them operate are you saying in Canada they're maybe it's so everywhere I don't know that the homeless people are are younger and do you know not in the same spectrum of age well I I don't think we've got very many quite old people in Canada homeless people here don't include a large number of of what I would call seniors you may have a slug between you know 45 and 60 especially men that are on drugs or have some mental problem but you know we have an unusual high proportion of our homeless are natives like you know because Canada has way more natives in the US because you killed all yours off or you killed off most of them you mean you mean native Indians yeah yeah yeah like in Canada and a couple of provinces Newfoundland in particular they did the American method of solving what they considered their Indian problem and that was just wipe them out you know where especially the fur that you get west in Canada they you know almost like the higher percentage of the population is still native so are you saying in a good part of the population of homeless is native yes yes and a lot of it comes to legal problems not unlike my earlier legal suggestion on on mental illness and drugs being a health problem but you also have you know that kind of problem with the discrimination in Canada is there and it has some you know overtones that are similar to the US if you get a small portion of the population that's running around doing something that the public doesn't like it's kind of treated as if well all of those people are the same you know we're in Canada they're definitely not you know we've got some of our natives are your wonderful high performing citizens but we sure have a slug of them in the homeless community well you know that's something to for us for you and me to discuss in a later show that is the diversity in Canada it differs from the diversity in the US and in I think many ways and we should make that distinction but let me let me pose something to you Ken which I think is is really critical in both places and I mean I know I know that it's critical in the US I don't know that it's critical in Canada you'll have to confirm that to me there was an article in The Times today about some fellow who was running for Congress and he was like 25 years old and and the notion of the article was hey this is a whole new source of of Congress people of candidates of politically activated people who could change broken democracy who could step up and you know have the benefit of their education and be fair minded and you know not not QAnon or anything and run for office and win for office on the basis of their youth their vitality and their clarity and it's coming I don't know if it's going to come soon enough but it's coming on the other hand the other hand and this is the point all those people in Seattle San Francisco LA New York you know unit Boston you name it who are on the streets young people okay they're not productive in terms of the political profile of the country they're not following the news I doubt that they are they're not whether they're educated or not they're not following it they're not participating in the political process well for that matter in the public conversation they have withdrawn okay from society that's part of being in a homeless community such as the picture on Hastings Street and we lose them they're not going to be around to participate in the next generation of of political officials and candidates uh is now you think that's happening in Canada too well most of Canadian youth have also been sucked into their iPhone you know I don't know what you'd call it but but certainly everybody's walking around with their hand in front of them including the all the middle-aged women um but especially the young people I mean they you go to a restaurant and and you know there may be four people at a table and all four of them are looking down at their device rather than talking to each other so I certainly agree with you that they don't seem to be engaged certainly from a Canadian point of view when you look at the US and you see the scenario that people you know treat Trump the way they have in the sense of as if he was innocent of all things and you know being you know wrongly accused of things instead of being the the rogue and damage to the US democracy that he is or at least from Canada it looks that way for sure no perhaps that's because I watch the news and I watch a variety of news well okay I mean I you know do you have this want to say you I mean people in Canada have the same concern that the the body of citizens that shape the elected in the body of elected officials has gone south in the US it certainly has you know half of the electorate or roughly half you know support a guy who is destroying democracy um is that phenomenon is that perception is that you know that of circumstances the same in Canada do you have that concern in Canada and I guess my question is what about the youth or the youth part of that are they helping hindering not involved what are they the participation in our voting is still heavily towards the seniors and not as many young people voting but we don't have the same radicalization as the Republican Party in the United States I mean both are key parties we actually have three parties and the two of them make the coalition government at this time both of them you know the main party is is sort of what I call center left and the party that they're coalescing with is extreme left they're like Barney Bernie Sanders level um and uh but we don't have uh you know people that are you know going to storm the the parliament we have um mild versions of some of those extreme people you know we had a trucker dispute in where they showed up at the border crossings with 18 wheelers to you know blockade uh some trade uh and they also had it in the nation's capital they brought a bunch of block uh 18 wheelers and beeped their horns but that was it you know there was no storming of parliament there was no you know thumping the police or you know carrying a bunch of guns etc uh you know your um your comments about Hastings Street and about homeless youth um on Hastings Street and elsewhere in Canada suggest to me that people really don't like to have um you know the homeless around them particularly if they're disorderly and I suppose a lot of people in the US feel that way I do um but the question is um you know isn't this a social phenomenon um can you blame them do you blame them um and do you blame the police for not uh removing them uh and not stopping their you know criminal activities such as you know they engage in um and what you know what do people want the government to do uh and does the government have any intention to public officials have any intention of doing anything about this or is it just going to get worse on Hastings Street you know Toronto Montreal you name it well I suppose you need to come back to a premise in the social security net you know what it was really that you um help somebody who was temporarily unemployed get back on their feet and back into the workforce you know there's not a thought of that person being on the street you help the you know the single mother where the courts have been unwilling to you know push the uh the husband to pay any support or he's totally disappeared um and uh you know but the lack of good support legal side you know for that causes a huge scale of single mothers pregnant mothers that society looks after you don't see them on on Hastings Street or any of these streets you know so who were you supposed to be helping you know you have handicapped people now you do see some handicapped people but they usually are also addicted to alcohol or drugs so you're you're really dealing you know with who is it that is there the you're young people I don't see what I would call in their 20s there's very very few late teens 20 year olds on the streets in in Canada in a homeless sense you know the ones that are you know you've got some that are on drugs and alcohol that are a little older but you know the the only young people you see are the ones that are taking advantage of the others yeah you're going to get worse uh on I would think it'll get worse before there's corrective measures taken to to um uh deal with uh the mental illness you know what we can't have people with mental problems in the hospitals there's not enough room they've eliminated the specialty facilities for the mentally ill with all of the drug and alcohol problems you know both of which I call you know once somebody's hooked it's a mental or it's a a medical problem but it's also a mental problem or it's a separate one you you just gotta have those types of facilities I mean Vancouver City has even gone to the extreme of recommending to the province who again recommended it to our federal government that they make special legislation making possession of a small amount of any kind of drug is not a crime you know so that and the basic idea was if if a person who is dead can't be redeemed you know they can't they can't recover you know and and the idea is a lot of these people are recoverable for the good of society and for their family and themselves and human nature would say we should try to assist them to recover if they don't have enough incentive themselves well that's a lot of the problem with the homeless is this lack of incentive to do anything different what can the government do I mean if you if you were you know the prime minister and and I gave you all the authority in the world what would you do to improve this problem because this is the this is the blight on every city it's the blight on on the society in Canada and certainly in the US well I would certainly be more heavy-handed than Vancouver city has been recently and and they've let this thing get to a point where it's really really difficult now other cities you know like Kelowna in the center of British Columbia is a city about 250,000 people so it's pretty tiny compared to Vancouver but we still have a fair homeless problem but our our police you know clean the people off of any street that you know they ought not to be on and you know they you know they seem to be not as big a nuisance but there's still way too much of it for the public you know but those ones you know you take who is a repeat offender of any offense and you've got to forcibly put them somewhere now jails are expensive you know you've got to run them through some kind of testing to see whether they really really wish to be a productive member of society they wish to get off the the drugs and and booze and and in particular off the street but you've got such a huge percentage of them they just don't want to get off the street no I think there's a community factor you know they they they find friends there they find a consolation there and and they and they I don't want to say enjoy but maybe that's appropriate they want to be with that crowd and the crowd wants to be with them and and so they're going to you know they're going to migrate together isn't that part of it that is definitely part of it they certainly you know object to the authority and you know as a group and you know Canada doesn't have a history of you know cleaning up crowds in the same aggressive way that countries around the world do and you know some of the times the U.S. does a bit heavy-handed but you know that we don't bring big fire hoses out and just blast them off the street but we need to do more than we're doing for sure okay well maybe you should run for a prime minister and and get get this done can you know I'm reminded of of Market Street in San Francisco Market Street very wide sidewalks you know like at least 20 feet along Market Street and the last time I was there it was covered you know one side to the other with homeless kids mostly young well that's about the width of Hastings yeah it means very luxurious sidewalks and and covered with people and you could hardly step through the people there was an eyesore and it was a deprivation of my rights or anybody's rights as a citizen to walk down the bloody sidewalk and so I mean if we never forget that when they take over a park or a sidewalk they're making it hard for everyone else can you imagine the business that is on the between you know next to that sidewalk you know Hastings Street in Vancouver was a prosperous business street you know before the pandemic you know now you had the COVID in the middle and you know then the all of these homeless end up there in the meantime yeah well when you said that I thought for a moment you're talking about another kind of business and and where does that go in in the street itself on the sidewalk there are no bathrooms around for people who want to spend all day on the sidewalk that way so I mean it really is a deterioration of our cityscape it's a deterioration of you know the the social organization of the city and it becomes more and more a problem and more and more a requirement that something is done and I I'm not happy that Canada has the same issues as so many American cities in fact it's it's kind of it's consoling that you do on the other hand there must be solutions like in Singapore where we can ameliorate this the point is it didn't happen 20 years ago it wasn't like that 20 years ago now all of a sudden maybe it's raised from space you know that have changed our world and it is happening and it has every indication of continuing yeah well I don't know how the homeless connects to you know the prevalence of soup kitchens or or food banks you know in the US you got your food stamps you know but those programs have all expanded dramatically in scale and I don't know you know specifically you know what portion of homeless people use a food bank but it's almost like a totally different group you know food banks people drive to in a vehicle and pick up food you know they at least have enough for a vehicle of the ones in Canada you know they you know downtown or soup kitchens there's a lot of those near the the homeless people you know and I don't know what portion of meals they get out of the people like the salvation army and equivalent charities and we haven't we haven't even touched on COVID how COVID may have exacerbated accelerated this whole process you know talk about mental illness I mean I don't know if it's a statistical thing but it seems to me that the amount of mental illness you could find if you look in this country and in Canada has dramatically increased over the past a few years part of it is COVID part of it is being on the street you know if you if you don't have a ordinary social experience that's going to affect your mental abilities and ability so we haven't really we haven't solved the problem here Ken perhaps you know perhaps I was at a side thought was COVID in a lot of ways simply had everybody else's guard down you know the lots of the businesses you know they were temporarily closed well that's a good time to set up your tent you know or you know the the police is not are not as busy because you know COVID is on there you know the cities are pretty quiet you know great time to create your little community of tents well the only thing that comes to mind and we're out of time here is that you want to you know solve this problem you have to look deeply into it you have to find out the fundamental flaws in the society that allow this to happen and exacerbate and then you have to address them and I can only say that if we don't do that and we haven't then we really haven't looked for those fundamental flaws and we haven't addressed them and we're only going to solve this when we do that so and I would say it's probably both the same in Canada and the US yeah it really is you've got to meet the the mega health problems with a bunch of you know financial money from governments of on high and you've got to tie in your your legal and policing to match it yeah and make housing that's that is housing is a big problem onto itself I mean it's almost an endless bucket but but there's a difference between what what standard of housing people want I mean you you watch in Japan somebody's gonna stay you know downtown for the evening and they and they ran to a cubicle you know like a six by three by three cubicle in a wall you know where where you know in in Kelowna I was looking at a project the other day that was a subsidized housing project you know where you know this is people that are supposedly totally distraught and unable and they're providing them you know a 1400 square foot three bedroom townhouse I mean that's nuts yeah well it's not gonna not gonna work but it's a very interesting question about Japan and I think we should we should address that on one of our shows to see what the homeless situation is in Japan what the housing situation is can it's been a great discussion with you um we'll come back for more in a couple of weeks it's great to make these comparisons and see how how things are north of the border thank you so much all right bye for now Ken Rogers retired businessman uh in Kelowna British Columbia thank you so much thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com mahalo